Vote!

As a child, I remember seeing movies and documentaries about racism and the civil rights era, thinking they were horror stories. Graphic scenes depicted Blacks being hung, raped, severely beaten, tortured, and shot dead as they fought for simple rights like the ability to sit and enjoy lunch in a restaurant, or vote to elect a politician who promised to represent them. I would have nightmares of those traumas, re-living people’s suffering all because they had the desire and will to want better for themselves and their children. As I sit and reflect on 2020 and our upcoming Presidential election, those images from my childhood still haunt me. Not only do those images still frighten me, but there is now new imagery of a new era of the same brutality and harassment.

Every election warrants everyone to exercise their right to vote, but now is especially a time in which all should enact their right to elect a candidate they think will be best to represent on many levels. It is very simple. We need change for the humanity of our nation. We need change for the sake of being a country in this world that truly signifies the principles of our nation's founding fathers. VOTE!